This just in from The Los Angeles Times: “Harry & David Holdings, the famed fruit and treats retailer that has been filling mail orders since the 1930s, said it would emerge from bankruptcy protection in mid-September. Harry & David filed for bankruptcy protection in March, blaming competition from Internet retailers and warehouse-style stores and the recession.”

I’m glad they’re back, if only because I’m a sentimental sort. From the day they ran their first aw-shucks ad (headline: “Imagine Harry and me — advertising in Fortune!”), Harry & David has been a direct response marketing icon.

As for “blaming competition from Internet retailers and warehouse-style stores and the recession,” well, every company can blame troubles on external factors. At least sometimes, that blame is no more than a sly way of avoiding saying, “We failed to foresee and respond to change.” All direct response marketers faced the same challenges Harry and David did, but not all ended up in bankruptcy. Some of them read the writing on the wall, endured the pain of adapting, and emerged with a promising albeit revised future.

I don’t deny that big hits can come from left field and take even the most astute unawares. But very often, external factors are internal ones in disguise. Somewhere in all of that, I suspect that both the successful and the not-so-successful can find grounds for humility.

An iconic leader is the marketer’s blessing and curse. One need look no further than the positive effect on Apple sales and stock when Steve Jobs was a known, active participant … and the negative effect when he was ousted, became seriously ill or, most recently, announced his resignation.

I must admit that I question the continued celebration of “1984.” What on earth makes it “…possibly [the] best overall spot”? Sure, it shines from a cinematic and allegorical standpoint. But from a substance and persuasiveness standpoint, I rank the “I’m a PC - I’m a Mac” campaign much, much higher.

My home base of Salt Lake City just joined the ranks of markets where non-believers advertise their non-belief. The billboard pictured above, not far from my house, went up earlier this week. The headline reads, “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.”

I was relieved to see that the Utah Coalition of Reason chose a message that stops short of slapping believers across the face. Some non-believer campaigns are outright and, I think, needlessly and counterproductively mean. Take, for instance, headlines like: “I’m saved from religion,” “All religions are fairy tales,” “You KNOW it’s a myth,” and even, “You KNOW they’re all scams.” In their stated objectives, sponsoring organizations mutter something about making people think and reaching out to closet doubters. But come on. Somewhere, deep down, there must also lurk an objective along this line: “To have fun antagonizing and polarizing.”

Granted, churches advertise. And (setting aside the futility of tu quoque arguments) sometimes they, too, wax abrasive. Take, for instance, billboards that call non-believers traitors. But more often, churches are content to witness for their deity of choice. Were a church to run billboards saying, “You KNOW you’re going to Hell if you don’t believe the way we do,” there would be howls of protest. And not just from non-believers.

My hat goes off to those on either side who lighten up and take a more whimsical approach. One of my favorites is a holiday board from the Freedom From Religion Foundation that says, simply, “Heathen’s Greetings.” And then there’s the one from believers — sorry, don’t know whose it is — that says, “Well, you did ask for a sign.—God.” You’d have to work hard to take offense at either one. Nonetheless, many people on both sides manage to do just that.

A Critical Dose of Critical ThinkingUseful for more effective marketing (and just more effective thinking)

Try this test to see if you were born with critical thinking skills (“critical” as in analytical). Are you:

A. Human (2 points)B. Not Human (1 point)C. Not Sure (0 points)

A score of 2 indicates that, even if you’re a good critical thinker, you probably weren’t born that way. (If you scored one or less, be careful whom you tell.)

Critical thinking has to do with learning to identify and evaluate facts in order to avoid being duped. This type of thinking doesn’t come naturally to humans (there are biological explanations why) but it can be profitable, especially for marketers.

Consider the arguments typically used to establish marketing success: sales are up; focus group participants liked the ads; phone research showed an increase in the number of people who said they’d purchase; web hits rose; the video went viral; the campaign won awards; post-campaign research showed an awareness increase; and, not to be overlooked, someone’s gut intuition just knows the campaign worked.

Fine. Except, not fine.

All it takes to call the above into question is a bit of critical analysis. It’s as simple as stepping back and saying, “Just a darned minute. What does the evidence really show?”

A sales increase can result from factors other than advertising; focus group research is not predictive; people saying they’ll purchase may not; web hits aren’t sales; a message can go viral but not sell; awards do not indicate market success; and awareness needn’t lead to sales. Oh, and as for gut intuition, be honest: Your gut tells you the sun orbits Earth.

Yet who can blame marketers for buying the above arguments? They’ve heard them throughout their careers. The arguments seem to make sense. And marketers really, really want to believe their stuff is working. But if you want to know — regardless of how much you want to believe — you’ll need to borrow a few standards from science.

Mind you, I’m not suggesting that marketers are not smart. But even the smartest scientists acknowledge their dupability. That’s why they insist on blind tests, strict controls, replication and peer review. These standards help them guard against error and against being fooled by what they expect to see.

For instance, suppose you want to know whether your marketing, versus some other factor, was responsible for a sales increase. As a marketer, you might begin by asking, “What would it take to convince me that the marketing didn’t work?” If your answer is, “Nothing, because I know I’m right,” you’re not thinking critically; you’re thinking dogmatically.

But as a scientist, you might say, “Suppose I divide a representative sample of my market into Group 1 and Group 2, taking care to keep them alike in terms of demographics and psychographics. I’ll expose only Group 1 to the marketing so that, to the best of my knowledge, that will be the only difference between the groups. If Group 1 purchases more than Group 2, I can reasonably conclude that my marketing is responsible. If the groups perform equally, I can conclude that my marketing made no difference. And, heaven forbid, should Group 2 outperform Group 1, I’ll conclude that my marketing is hurting sales.”

Want to get really scientific? Triple-blind the test: (1) Do not let either group know about the other, what you’re trying to learn, or that they are even part of a test. (2) Ensure that whoever tracks purchases doesn’t know which group was exposed to the marketing. (3) Ensure that whoever compiles and interprets the data doesn’t know, either.

Good scientific tests can be replicated. This is important for ruling out flukes. So repeat the test two or three times to new, equally valid samples. Consistent test results are highly reliable indicators.

You might be wondering how you’ll expose Group 1 to your marketing while insulating Group 2 from it. Easy. Target Group 1 with the medium that gives you optimum distribution control: direct mail. Leave Group 2 alone.

A critical approach isn’t for people who want to prove themselves right. It’s for people who want to find out what’s right. And it brims with advantages. It reduces error and self-delusion. Every test leads to learning. Moreover, you’ll know what’s working, so you can do more of it. Equally important, you’ll know what’s not working, so you can modify, replace or retire it instead of throwing good money after bad.

All of which would seem to indicate that critical thinking can be critical to your continued success and employment.

Ding, dong, the king is deadWhich old king? The creepy king. Ding, dong, the creepy king is deeeeead...

This just in from the Associated Press: “Burger King’s spooky The King mascot is retiring so the struggling burger chain can refocus its marketing to reach new customers.”

In my book, not a moment too soon. I realize there are people who mistakenly thought they liked the mascot. As for me and my house, he creeped us out, “showing up,” as the AP piece puts it, “in people’s beds and peeping in their windows.” Indeed. Someone should have called the cops on the perv long ago.

“We won’t be seeing The King for a while,” a Burger King spokesman said. Which is far too soon for some of us.

If you want to change your logo, fine. What I find amusing, in an annoying sort of way, is marketers who feel they must spew hot air in commemoration of the blessed event in their product’s life.

Petco is one of the latest. Here’s the old logo:

Here’s the new:

They changed the font, added a word to the tag line, and enlarged the dog-and-cat graphic. Simple enough, right?

Silly you. Read what Petco CMO Elisabeth Charles has to say about it : “The update to our logo reflects the fresh, forward-looking company that Petco is today. Our new visual identity better reflects the new Petco — healthy, active and contemporary — while retaining the essence of the brand, its warmth and our passion for pets.”

I am so embarrassed. How on earth did I miss all that?

This reminds me of what Pepsi had to say about their own logo redesign two years ago (an event so big that I bet most of you are saying, “Pepsi redid their logo two years ago?”). They heralded the one-million-dollar logo tweak as calling to mind “the Earth’s magnetic fields and the sun’s radiation,” thus evoking “...emotive forces [that] shape the gestalt of the brand identity.”

Not long ago, a colleague asked if serif fonts like Times still sell better than sans serif fonts like Arial.

Answer: I dunno. I hope you know, and won’t mind sharing.

When I studied typography in the dark ages, eye tracking studies favored serif fonts. But to infer greater marketing effectiveness from eye motion was a leap. More convincing were split-copy tests that direct marketers executed in print and mail, where sans serif fonts consistently outperformed in terms of cold, hard sales.

Two explanations were proffered. One was that serifs provide a horizontal guide for the the eye to follow. The other was, simply, that we became acclimated to serifs because we grew up seeing more of them. I have always leaned toward the “acclimated” explanation. “Horizontal guide” is plausible, but “acclimated” doesn’t seem to push Occam’s Razor quite so far.

The question is by no means moot. If “acclimated” indeed accounts for serif fonts’ better performance in days of yore, then it is entirely possible for it to change. Given the ubiquity of sans serif fonts on the web and smart phones, it may have already changed, or have begun changing.

So, I am on the lookout for empirical data. Click-throughs, time spent on pages, etc., etc., all are well and good, but what I really want is data about cold, hard sales. My Inner Nerd loves knowing, just to know. My Inner Marketer wants to steer clients in the right direction. How about it, readers? Any data?

“It will be an ad like no other. Hoping to learn how advertising works, a Yale University psychologist has teamed up with a New York ad agency to design and test a novel marketing campaign — aimed at monkeys. The idea is to explore whether susceptibility to messages, such as those used in marketing, is deeply ingrained in humans because it is embedded in our DNA — inherited from long-ago ancestors common to us and monkeys — or whether it is a strictly human weakness. The research is part of a broader effort to understand the evolutionary origins of our thought processes and behaviors, especially when it comes to making economic decisions.”

Scoff if you will. As one who is enthusiastic for both evidence-based marketing and evolutionary biology, I think this is pretty cool.

Not that there aren’t potential problems.

It would be all too easy for researchers to infer effects they expect to see. Hopefully psychologist Laurie Santos will control for that.

Another problem is that not all ads are created equal. Suppose the tested ad produces no effect. Does that mean monkeys are impervious to advertising, or simply that the ad sucked?

For that matter, the advertising industry itself embraces all kinds of myths. I outline a number of them in my book Prove It Before You Promote It. If the ad creators indulge them — not just possible, but likely — the monkeys’ reactions will be incidental. But that won’t necessarily prevent anyone from taking those reactions, or their lack, as significant.

Finally, this research will inevitably provide fodder for people who think advertising controls minds, parents who blame marketing for their inability to tell their kids no, fat people with fat kids who claim they’d be svelte and healthy were it not for us damned advertisers, and people who refuse to live on a budget and blame their onerous debt on advertising.

Still, I like this research. At worst, it could yield nothing. At best, it could yield interesting information. About marketing, and about us. (Here is a link to the article in The Boston Globe.)

• • • In other news paling by comparison, the RESPONSE Agency is 17 years old today. • • •